


Tales from Quarantine: Jason and Monica

by Metal_Gear_Steve



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, covid story, light and fluffy, original original original, sex mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24750439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metal_Gear_Steve/pseuds/Metal_Gear_Steve
Summary: Monica's workplace closed 2 weeks ago. Jason lost his job yesterday. Neither of them feel particularly flash about it.Just a little relationship story with COVID-19 and lockdown as a framing device. Heavy concepts to begin with, but it lightens up.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character





	Tales from Quarantine: Jason and Monica

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. This is a bit of a departure for me - I'm not good with original stuff. To me, these two are a pair of names attached to a couple of personalities - I have no idea what Jason would look like, and I kinda-sorta based Monica on a girl I like lmao. I'm planning more chapters, so I'll hammer out the finer details later.

Jason opened his groggy eyes for the third and final time at 2:14pm. He had forgotten to take off his work alarms on his phone, and as such he had been woken up a couple of times earlier in the day to the loud beeping of his 7:00am and 7:30am work alarms.

Letting the mid-afternoon heat sink in for a second, he reached a heavy hand over to his bedstand and grabbed his phone to confirm the time. It was a bit of a shock for him to see how late it was in the afternoon, and he dropped his phone onto his blanketed chest and let out a heavy sigh.

Even when he didn't have work, or when he cashed in his annual holiday leave, Jason tended to get out of bed before 12pm. It wasn't a point of pride or anything, just a part of his schedule that he had grown accustomed to. He didn't mind a sleep-in, but he hadn't woken up this late since high school - it sunk even deeper into his mind the longer he laid in bed.

It was only one heavy thought joining a complicated web of others. Because usually he would be knee-deep in work, preparing for the after-school rush of parents and kids hitting his supermarket - 3:00pm to 5:00pm tended to be the busiest hours of the day for the Big W store that he managed. It was only Tuesday, and his day off tended to be Thursday. And now he had been asleep until 2 in the afternoon.

Looking at the ceiling, Jason let a wave of despair wash over him - leaving a cold blanket of goosebumps all over his body.

He would have been at work if he had a workplace to go to.

Out of all the malls in Canberra... it was the one shopping centre containing his place of work that had been completely shuttered due to COVID-19.

The worst part was that other Big W stores were still open. There were shopping centres that hadn't closed, where Big W and other essential businesses were allowed to stay open, and there were individual Big W stores that weren't closing their doors. But his Big W, his place of work, was closed.

What else could he do? Restaurants and corner stores were closing due to COVID concerns, so he couldn't have gotten a bite to eat without pigging out on KFC or Hungry Jack's. The coffee place he liked had closed a week ago, so there was no incentive to keep his morning schedule. Everything felt like it was falling apart - on some level, even just a tiny little bit, Jason had begun to fall into despair.

_8 years at Big W... and it ends like this._

Jason's eyes glazed over with tears, and he rolled over to face his bedstand.

_God, how am I going to face Monica?_

Monica - his girlfriend of 2 years. She worked in a salon, which stayed open a bit longer than either of them had expected. But her workplace had gotten axed two weeks previously, so she had become a bit of a busybody at home. COVID was a frequent topic of conversation at home, and Jason had assured Monica that he was going to be able to provide for the both of them.

Without a job between them, Jason and Monica couldn't pay the rent. Jason hadn't even processed what had happened yet - where was he going to find another retail job in this climate? It seemed hopeless.

Jason came back to his senses. He was at home, sleeping, at 2 in the afternoon. Monica had kept busy after her job went under, and he saw her every morning and every night for the last two weeks since her workplace closed their doors. The thought of facing her after spending all day in bed stressed him out all the more, and he could feel years beginning to pool in his eyes the more he lingered on the point.

_She's been taking her bad luck so well, and now I've lost my job, I'm sulking in bed in the middle of the day? What am_ _I doing with my life?_

Tears streamed out of Jason's eyes, and he wiped them away with his blanket. She had been so strong for him, but he just turned his alarm off and slept for an additional 7 hours out of despair when he suffered the same misfortune as she did. She was probably up doing laundry, or doing some dishes, or something that Jason had been neglecting in favor of focusing on work.

It was all so overwhelming. The groggy, warm comfort that Jason had felt upon waking up was replaced with icy shame.

_Well... the cat's out of the bag now. I've got to be a man about this, face her and apologize._

Jason laid back down, and he began counting down from 10. When he hit 0, he was going to throw the blanket off himself, get up and find his girlfriend, and he was going to explain himself.

But around the time he hit 3, he felt something stir beside him.

He looked over to his right, at the other side of the bed.

It was Monica.

She was curled up in their shared blanket, her curly brown hair spilling out from under the covers like a giant bundle of spiders. Sound asleep - just like Jason had been.

He learnt over and parted her hair, revealing her face. From the exposure to sunlight, or maybe from her hair being touched, she opened her eyes and stared up into Jason's face.

"...G'morning."

Monica yawned.

"G'morning... what time is it?"

\---

Upon telling her, both Jason and Monica sat up in bed. Jason told Monica about his fear and insecurity over losing his job, and Monica began to explain her own process.

"...like, the only reason I kept to some sort of schedule is because you were going to work, y'know. I get what you mean about everything being closed, and I'm worried about catching Coronavirus, so I spend all day inside trying to stay busy."

"Yeah, it was a balance of wanting to stay employed vs not wanting to get sick," Jason added on, "and it was even worse with everything shutting down. It feels like this sickness is a death sentence, but it also feels like an inevitability."

"God, I know right?" Monica put her head in her hands for a second, running her fingers through her mass of hair. "It's like... how are we going to get through this? We're facing unemployment on one side, and potential death on another side. So we stay indoors, but we have to go to work which puts us at risk, and if we DON'T work, we can't stay indoors because we can't pay the rent!"

"Yeah," Jason muttered. "Shit's pretty fucked right now."

They sat in silence for a while, feeling their legs burn up as they sat unused under the covers.

"...I was worried about disappointing you this morning."

Jason adjusted his sitting position, feeling his girlfriend glance over at him.

"I felt like such a waste. You'd been up and about all the time when you got laid off, and here I am in bed at 2pm, wrapped up like a baked potato."

"Trust me, dude - it has taken every fibre of my being just to get out of bed with you these last two weeks. It's been a daily struggle not to roll back over and go back to sleep."

She moved herself closer to Jason, who put his arm around her.

"I used your schedule as a way to try and ground myself, and now that's gone, things are probably about to get a bit out of hand for both of us. But I don't want us to feel bad about it - this issue is beyond both of us, and when every day brings more and more stress like this, we need all the comfort that we can get."

Jason buried his face into her hair, planting a kiss on her.

"I love you so much, y'know that?"

Monica sunk into his embrace.

"If you didn't, all that sex we've been having is super weird in retrospect."

Jason started laughing and lost his composure, to Monica's great amusement. Without warning, though, Jason rolled over to Monica's side of the bed, pulling her along with him. She started laughing along with him as she straddled his lap, and soon a sense of calm washed over them.

"Well," Jason spoke as his nerves evened out, "how about some more of that super weird retrospective sex?"

Monica smirked.

"I dunno, don't you have work in the morning?"

And with that, the pair wrestled with each other to get the other one naked, with the widest of grins painted across their faces the entire time.


End file.
